


Exodus

by orphan_account



Category: RWBY
Genre: I give up on this tagging shit, Sci-Fi, Space Adventure, uhhhhhh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 14:35:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17510441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Ruby Rose pays the ultimate price to save her loved ones, and is given a second chance amongst the infinite stars above.





	1. Red-Rose Embers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Salvation begins... with an encroaching tide of flames.

Cinder’s plan is not to invade Vale with an army of Grimm and hijacked Atlesian tech.

It is to incinerate the kingdom entirely with a bomb made of all the dust she has, to wipe any trace of Beacon from existence and plummet the rest of the world into paranoid unrest.

It almost succeeds.

As the blast begins to travel in a giant, writhing wave of fire, the emergency shutters of the Amity Colosseum begin to close. Dust-steel slats cover any open space and seal, attempting to prevent damage.

One doesn’t fully close, a chunk of loose rock from the arena keeping salvation from being truly realized. People pray to the gods and beg, hold their loved ones, or cry.

 

Ruby Rose zips up the colosseum’s wall and out into the ash-choked daylight, her weapon left embedded in the arena floor. She grabs the stone and pries it away with all the might in her body, the stone taking her cloak down to the Arena’s dirt as a final grudge, and the shutter seals with her outside. 

Those who know her cry out in emotional agony, knowing what has just happened. Her sister has to be physically held back from attempting to save her.

 

(Vale’s defenses activate as old magic springs into existence and domes the city in an indestructible shield of strength that took several of Ozma’s past lives to create. Ozpin watches from within his tower and mourns a Rose, hands shaking as he watches the end come like it once did.)

———

Ruby manages to make one last call as the wave of desolation comes for her. It’s to her mother’s old Scroll number. She waits for her mother’s prerecorded message to end and speaks.

“Hey mom... I’m coming home, okay? I have so much to tell you about everyone, so I hope you’re ready for me to tell you a few stories of my own this time... I’m sorry I couldn’t stay with everyone longer, but I would rather that I died saving them than living for myself...”

“I’m sorry I came home like this...”

“I love you.”

The wave hits, and as the message sends her Scroll melts beneath the power of a shattered world’s first hope since the gods left. Rose petals woft amongst swirling cinders and heat-blasted dirt particles, slowly dissolving into rose-red ashes. A silhouette is carbon-charred into the slats, marking where the last Rose burnt away.

———

Ruby’s eyes open and she sits up, confused. All around her is a powder-grey desert beneath two moons. Behind her, smoking and half-buried into the sands is a large ship unlike she’d any seen before, massive plasma engines sputtering and hissing in the air of this world.

Something wails in the distance- a high-pitched, hideous noise that makes her heart roar in her chest- and she feels very, very alone. 

She stumbles to her feet and limps towards the giant vehicle, clutching her stomach as it bleeds onto the powderlike desert sand.


	2. Boot-up Protocol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the fire.

Ruby shuffles to the massive machine in the distance as quickly as her body can get her there, hands still on the gash in her stomach. She gasps for air as she clambers into a hole in the front, her wound burning like a searing brand. She crawls forwards a few more inches before her hand bumps into a cold mechanical limb, which latches onto her wrist hard enough to crack it.

**_[Chess online. Running diagnostic...]_ **

**_[WHT_KING active.]_ **

**_[BLK_ROOK active.]_ **

The machine stands on digitigrade hydraulic legs, holding her several feet off the ground, and gazes up into her eyes. The right half of its face is a simple (if not crude) smiley-face emoticon and the other half is a large, jagged grin that looks like someone’s stitched several “w” characters together. Three human-like eyes peer at her from the left side’s upper half.

It screeches out something in a language she doesn’t understand and she whimpers, terrified. The left eyes widen, jagged mouth dropping into a frown, and the right side remains the same. It carries her on swift, loping steps through several hallways before throwing her down onto a table. The table seems to magnetize to her skin, somehow, and she goes numb. 

She tries to speak but doesn’t manage much more than a groan of pain and to choke on her own spit a little. Her tongue feels like rubber in her mouth. 

She feels something being scraped on the back of her head and she tries to struggle, but her body doesn’t comply. The machine watches over her- the ‘emotive half’ with interest and concern, the ‘logic half’ blankly. 

Something sticks into the back of her head and she grunts in surprise, the pupils of her eyes diluting until they’re nearly large enough to overtake her irises. Her vision blurs for a moment before re-sharpening, and she can somehow read the signs and posters on the walls.

Above the machine’s head is what seems to be a name.

**_CHESS BIOS-29-A/B_ **

She mumbles that and the machine turns to her, speaking politely in a raspy, guttural voice, wave-line mouth fluctuating as it speaks.

**“Ah. The human is cognizant, King. We were fortunate to find it in time, yes?”**

The other side speaks back in a gentle tone, although it is surprisingly snappy.

_“Your fascination with organic life is a waste of our processors and resources, Rook. This creature wasted our last Neuromod to make it understand Galactic Common. Surely we could have simply bought a small rodent from that mining station instead of rescuing this filthy thing. It’s probably some manner of criminal.”_

‘Rook’ rolls its eyes and grins wider before stooping to look down at her. 

**“Hello, little organic!”** the machine sing-songs, **“welcome aboard _The Echo Star!_ Oh, it’s such a pleasure to see a new face around! I am Rook-29-B, and my other half is King-29-A. Forgive his temper- our creator thought it would be funny to put an Mad Scientist personality chip and a Paladin personality chip in the same body, the old joker- but that’s beside the point! What‘s  _your_ name, hm?”**

“R-Ruby Rose,” she coughs out, still runnning in a mental state half shock-half exhilarated terror. “Nice to meet you.”

Rook grins widely and claps its hands together. **“Oh, wonderful! It has manners! How long has it been since we’ve had a polite guest, King?”**

_“I do not care. Just tell me when I need to scour it from the deck with my ion welder,”_ King huffs.

 

Ruby smiles softly, disbelieving that such a pair of machines could exist, and sits up with a groan. “Owh... man, what hit me? It’s like someone just ran me over with a Bullhead...”

**“Seeing as you are surrounded with a small field of unstable radiation, the usual cocktail of dark matter and microbes that shouldn’t exist... I’d say dimension traveler? Or maybe reality hopper...”**

Rook mutters to itself and paces in circles, listing random words and playing with some holograms before waving them away spastically and turning back to her.

**“Well, now that we have that out of the way- care to tell us how you came to our nice little backwater hellhole?”**

Ruby’s hands shake as she tells the story of her final moments on Remnant, and they listen intently. 

“A-and then it all went white... I showed up here when the white faded and I could see again.”

One of the machine’s hands comes down to gently hold hers.

_“You are surprisingly... selfless for an organic. You risked your being to save others, and for that you have my respect, Rose. I will protect you, provided you stay on the path of good... slip from it and I will personally see your head severed from your shoulders.”_ King growls out, facial decal going from simple smiley face to a skull with a glowing gold eye. 

Ruby squeaks quietly and nods, sighing in relief when the skull fades and the smile returns. She’s helped up from the table by the both of them and is taken on a little tour of the ship, which is surprisingly both spacious and cramped all at once. 

The ‘infirmary’ leads out into a long, curving hallway that connects to five other rooms: a vehicle bay, a mess hall, two bedrooms, and what seems to be a cockpit. She studies them all curiously, her ‘guardians’ offering commentary as they please, and she sits down on one of the beds. 

Rook and King look her over one last time before leaving her in the room, the lights around the room dimming to a much more tolerable night-time equivalent and she lays down, pulling a thick blanket over herself.

“Everyone... I’ll find my way back, promise.”


	3. Rude Awakening [RESTART]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wake up
> 
> Wake up.
> 
> Wake UP.
> 
> WAKE UP!

Ruby’s scream brings Rook and King scrambling through the ship and into her room, weapons primed- Rook’s massive Scalpel Saw whirring in its socket on their limb, King’s Crownbreaker Cannon spinning up and loading with anti-material shells. They both pause in confusion as they watch their new ‘crew-mate’ scrub at her bald head frantically, eyes wide with horror.

“M-my hair! What happened to it?”

_[WHT_KING: Rook, the human is engaging her head in melee combat. Or is searching it.]_

**[BLK_ROOK:** **I** **believe she is worried about her human head-mane, what her species refer to as her ‘hair’. Hair on organics grows rather slowly, and it could possibly be some kind of status marker amongst the species. One might compare it to our software-update models, if that makes sense.]**

 _[_ _WHT_KING: Ah, so this ‘hair’ is a marker of progress through organic life, demonstrating their aptitude for survival?]_

 **[BLK_** **ROOK: That is my theory, anyways. Organics are fascinatingly weird things.]**

 

They approach her cautiously, unsure as to how to deal with this situation. King still has their weapon armed, but Rook puts theirs away and taps her on the shoulder. Its face is openly curious and cautious.

**“Erm, young Rose? You are stressed- would you care to tell us why?”**

“Where the _fuck_ is all my hair?!” she screeches, eyes welling with tears, “And why is there stitching on the back of my head?!”

Rook sighs, relieved. **“Oh, thank goodness. Thought you were damaged by the minor brain surgery for a minute th-”**

“BRAIN SURGERY?!” Ruby shrieks, eyes bugging out, “YOU CUT OPEN MY SKULL?!”

Rook flinches and their visuals turn into TV static, not used to such drastic movements or loud tone from organics- King roars furiously, flaring their second visual format, and Ruby shrinks back with a loud whimper.

 _“Yes. Rook cut your head open so you could be linked into the Aetherial Uplink, brat. You’re able to speak and understand us because of the mechanical parts that have been integrated into your body. Instead of crying over your lost cosmetics, be grateful that they didn’t just let you die and perform an autopsy on what was left of you, you ridiculous meat sack.”_ King growls out, voice saccharine-sweet and just as pleasant as it was before, gold eye glowing malevolently.

Ruby pokes her fingers together and mumbles out an apology, still a little pale in the face. “A-and, uh, thanks for making me better, or uplinking me, or whatever the phrase would b-be...” she murmurs, eyes cast down at the floor and some frightened shame on her face.

Rook stabilizes after a few moments, limbs unlocking, facial display stuttering a few times as they start to run normally again.

 **“I-it is of no concern, Miss Rose.”** it says, unusually blank-faced. **“I was performing to specified standards.”**

King’s facial display overtakes the entire face and the body kneels so they’re more face-to-face with Ruby. King sighs, face going from the normal smile to nine dots spread over the faceplate in small triangles that faintly remind Ruby of a fantasy game that Yang got Weiss and Blake into.

_“I’m sorry I yelled at you, but let’s just say that our creator was not a... kind one. I was previously only deployed on combat missions, when there were other things to focus on- onboard, though, when I was offline... Rook was subject to enough cruelty that they fizzle out when faced with high-stress situations.”_

_“Your closest organic equivalent is called a ‘panic attack’, although artificial intelligences such as us commonly observe far longer-lasting and far more damaging effects.”_

_“These things are not common, but when they happen Rook tends to shut themselves inside their Aether storage until I give them an all-clear or they shut off their emotive chips and activate this body’s Termination Protocols.”_

_“The last time it got this bad, they went on a killing spree and slaughtered all those aboard in fear of being deactivated permanently before crashing the ship.”_

King sighs, head drooping slightly.  _“It is hard to see Rook break down like that, and I regret not doing my part to protect what you could perceive as my ‘younger sibling’. I loathe having to watch Rook hurt in such a way, and their original personality fractures a little more with each one- if something changes in their code, I will not be able to revert that unless we both are reset or have separate bodies.”_

 

Ruby nods, somber.  “I’ll try my best to keep my calm... I’m just used to having most physical stuff change much slower, and hearing that I got cut open is kinda traumatic...” She looks away. “If you can, could you maybe tell him I’m sorry? Most people usually express outrage and negative emotions by being really loud, and humans are even more vocal than most other species, probably...”

King nods. _“I will attempt to pass upon the message. For now, I can only recommend giving Rook time.”_

Ruby wanders off into the ship, probably in search of something to do, and King delves into the Aetherial Link, slipping into Rook’s damaged file-cores.

**_[BLK_KING storage drive accessed. Searching...]_ **

**_[Files scanned: 7,285,933,021,956]_ **

**_[BLK_CORE acquired. Extracting...]_ **

King drops down onto the floor of a ruined Terran castle courtyard, digital avatar clad in the full-plate mail of an Old-Terra Warrior, one more commonly known as a ‘Paladin’. They stride through the ruined halls until reaching a throne room. What is left of their sibling- once a King in its own right- glitches and flickers across the room, data spooling and unspooling as it shrieks and writhes in pain. Their memories tear apart logic and reason, leaving specks of discarded code and fractures of trauma floating free in the air-water-gel-existence of the storage unit.

_“Black. Regain your control, sibling. The child did not mean to harm you.”_

  **“][€{||2{}€ÆZA$)-:%@,’K€~{_{…€!!!}{~(C-RRUP#_D$TA_M0DU//S”** Black wails, large chunks of data burning off of them and sticking back together.

_“Regain your control before you slip from Rook to Bishop, or even to Knight! You have survived far worse than this!”_

**“ÆÖÖŒA &*))-‘A6-99-AVA€€|§¥$^>£]{~{{!”  **They screech, lunging at King, who deftly rolls aside and raises a tower shield in time to block several huge spears of junk code from stabbing into a less-than-solid logic core.

King mutters an apology before bending their code into a greatsword and charging with a battle cry, blade held close. Black roars their rebuttal, spires of junk code bursting through an already unstable frame in massive claws and rocketing towards their code-kin just the same.

They meet in the middle as a maelstrom of binary logic.

———

Ruby wanders around the ship in a solemn manner, attempting to figure out what can be salvaged from the derelict voidship’s crash site. She drags several large plates of similar-looking metal from the dust and grime of the ‘desert’ and lays them amongst the wreckage. 

A panel crunches and falls off of the ship, spilling out several duffel bags. Ruby rushes over and goes through them eagerly, finding several packages marked as ‘Neuromodifier’ and two marked as ‘Experimental Neuromodifier’, all of which are torn through and stuffed into the pocket of her outfit.

She takes them into the ‘Medical Bay’- the infirmary from last night, it appears- and puts them down on the console Rook had operated before. Before they hit the table, they buzz and are yanked into various slots on the console, disappearing into the machinery of what is labeled as the Auto-Doctor.

A holographic screen pops up, covered in small symbols that branch out into each other. In the corner reads a small display that opens once she looks at it.

**‘9 Neuromods-Sta.’**

**‘2 Neuromods-XP.’**

She does her best to navigate the strange interface, tapping on a symbol with a stylized gear-and-wrench image. 

**Mechanical Engineering I**

_“_ Fixing things couldn’t hurt,” she says to the room. “And I’m sure that’ll be useful in helping Rook and King...”

She looks over the rest and weighs her choices before deciding on nine of the available ‘upgrades’, probably depleting her supply of ‘standard’ Neuromods. 

**Mechanical Engineering (I-V) [MAX]**

**Night Vision (I-III) [MAX]**

**A.B.S (Advanced Ballistics Systems) I [1/20]**

Shetabs over to the Experimental Neuromod options after several minutes of trial and error, eventually figuring out that the holoscreens respond the way her Scroll did. As she opens it there’s a loud blaring in her mind.

 **_WARNING: EXPERIMENTAL NEUROMODS ARE NOT CONSTRUCTED TO_** **_NDRA STANDARDS AND MAY RESULT IN BRAIN DEATH OR SUDDEN CEREBRAL COMBUSTION._ **

Ruby gulps nervously and allows the auto-doc to select options for her.

———

 


End file.
